We don’t know much about Grockit. The company is creating a new way to get people to learn online, and has spent the last year working away in stealth mode. Whatever it is, it’s apparently impressing investors: Grockit just raised $8 million in Series B funding from Integral Capital and Benchmark Capital, bringing its total to $10.7 million - impressive for a product that has yet to see the light of day.
According to the company’s press release, Grockit is “a MMOLG (Massively Multi Player Online Learning Game) where people can connect to learn from each other”. The company hopes to release the product this fall.
Grockit originally launched in November 2006 as an online exam-prep class that competed with companies like Kaplan and The Princeton Review. In July 2007 Grockit announced that it had scrapped that idea in favor of their current plan, and raised a $2.7 million Series A round led by Benchmark and angel investors.
The company was founded by Farbood Nivi, who taught in the exam-prep business for years, and Michael Buffington, an experienced Rails developer.
So much money and a product being developed in a total vacuum? Oh yeah, this is gonna end up well… we’ve never seen anything like that before
@1
Oh, a prophet, we’ve never seen anything like this before.
With the web 2.0 approach. one gets to know something until you become part of it.
Grock it is just doing exactly that.
This idea is a time bomb
It’s gonna xplode in a good way
And there is no much time for this ))
well, it could only be better than the kaplan courses
rumor i’ve heard is a design and gameplay styled after second life…
That’s Interesting, this also reminds me of TrainerWare
http://www.mlmasian.com/aboutu.....erWare.php
“The company hopes to release the product this fall.”
Just curious … are they going to be listed as TechCrunch50??
Smells like it …
Way to go Farb - I can’t wait to see - scratch that - learn from this game.
For those negative comments - You guys don’t know Farb - one of the smartest peeps I know. This is going to be huge.
I just posted an interview with Grockit CEO/Founder Farb Nivi on my blog at seedwatcher.com - a little more insight into what they are up to.
Congrats on the acquisition, Grockit! Farb is a good guy.
I’m all for more games. This is an interesting concept. Let’s see a demo.
Ryan
lessons in brevity: http://www.mofata.com
Glad to see an e-learning company getting this sort of funding. Typically education gets pushed to the wayside and is developed by non-profits. I hope that we will see some competition and innovation in this realm.
I regards to the development in a vacuum, we will find out the result shortly. It seems that some companies manage to hit the nail on the head and others just hit themselves in the head
Dave, Second Life has zero gameplay, other than what’s created by the users, I hope these guys keep things just a bit more constrained in a good way.
@12 (Laurent): There is a lot of investment going into education these days… $30M into GlobalScholar, for instance. Big amounts into TutorVista, Education.com and my company, LearnHub.com.
Congrats Farb and Grockit team!